Certain "members" of Apositive tried to flex their muscles and become the de facto people who run Apositive, and when Nancy resisted them, they conspired to enervate Nancy to such an extent that she quit Apositive herself for a while.

They are the kinds of fanatics who are prepared to destroy the world if they can't have things their way.

I have nothing but contempt for them. And neither should Apositive's management.

The "expletive deleted" thread has nothing to do with language filters. It's really a bunch of sophists putting their word-twisting skills to use in order to trick Nancy and Kæth into shutting down this website. Why? Because this website shows disturbing signs of not toeing the party line as those sophists see it, and nothing bothers those sophists more than genuine independence from their own dogmas.

I have a suggestion: institute a rule about evading the language filter and permaban anyone who uses any technique to evade it. Start with the member who used such evasive techniques in a poll thread I started recently in General Discussions. I thought that person was abusing me but s/he was merely rubbing Nancy's nose in the poo.

The only way to handle the devious way in which the AVEN commando sophist brigade operates is to start permabanning people who violate the rules of basic human decency. And about five or six members of that brigade have done so time and time again. So get rid of them.

Michael has his own opinions based on his own experiences, and while I don't always agree with him, I believe that he is entitled to express them without being belittled.I suspect that he also has a sense of humour. At least, I hope so.

Well I suppose we could have a serious and rational discussion about this, in which we earnestly try to convince Michael that we are not, in fact, intent on tricking you and Kæth into shutting down apositive (not to mention destroying the world as an afterthought, if we get the chance that is).

Or we could get a little more pointed about it and suggest that perhaps these allegations are just a smidgen on the paranoid side - but Olivier was already censured for this.

So no: humour it is. Like you say elsewhere, it's a very powerful tool. (Though if simply taking the allegations of the OP at face value counts as belittlement, this should be saying something...)

michaels wrote:I have a suggestion: institute a rule about evading the language filter and permaban anyone who uses any technique to evade it. Start with the member who used such evasive techniques in a poll thread I started recently in General Discussions. I thought that person was abusing me but s/he was merely rubbing Nancy's nose in the poo.

Indeed, the best way to combat this and save our freedom is to institute totalitarian rule. Let's take a note out of America's book and add full body scanners and suspend habeas corpus. Freedom is slavery!

michaels wrote:I have a suggestion: institute a rule about evading the language filter and permaban anyone who uses any technique to evade it. Start with the member who used such evasive techniques in a poll thread I started recently in General Discussions. I thought that person was abusing me but s/he was merely rubbing Nancy's nose in the poo.

Indeed, the best way to combat this and save our freedom is to institute totalitarian rule. Let's take a note out of America's book and add full body scanners and suspend habeas corpus. Freedom is slavery!

[/sarcasm]

I guess your preferred way is for Nancy and Kæth to let people walk all over them--and to continue spending their own money on a forum in which they are verbally abused and subject to sophistries, taunting and verbal trickery.

I can understand your not getting too excited when it happens to me because I'm a lifelong target of these kinds of people. But Nancy and Kæth have to be the most inoffensive human beings on earth, and it's criminal that THEY would be targeted.

In my view their first mistake was attempting to engage in good-faith discussion with a cru that totally lacks good faith and only understands hidden agendas. The only way to deal with people who lack good faith is to get rid of them. And I continue to advocate doing exactly that.

Put simply: Nancy and Kæth are SPENDING THEIR OWN MONEY on this forum. They are entitled to run it the way they want to. If people take steps to interfere with the running of the forum then they should either put their money where their mouth is and start paying for the forum or face a permanent ban. It's not totalitarian rule. It's common sense.

There are people showing up from time to time who would be good members if they weren't squeezed out by the AVEN commandos, who currently dominate discussion and twist things toward their own interest at every opportunity. I'm all for Apositive becoming a GENUINE alternative to AVEN rather than a sandbox where AVEN operatives come to practise their skills at sophistry.

I'd not say anyone was walked all over. The discussion was pretty straightforward, point/counter-point type thing. Nor did I see any verbal abuse. Admittedly the discussion did get heated, but the topic stayed pretty much entirely on the merits of the conflicting opinions; it did not go to ad-hominem attacks. I fail to see where anything was not in good faith.

micahels if you really cared about Nancy and Kæth and the future of Apositive you'd stop making these ludicrous threads with ridiculous paranoid accusations, as this sort of nonsense doesn't keep in line with Nancy's vision of this site being respected by the scientific community at large.